Heya so im in the low elo bracket low 900s. I noticed that roughly 1/2 players seam to not want to play units and just want to build a castle on your woodline. Sometimes I know there doing it, sometimes they just do it and I can beat it sometimes by moving eco. Im wondering the best way to counter it. Should I try and get imp asap or try and beat them in castle age by shoving my own castle up there and ramming it down?
make army to deny it and scout it even on arena.
Btw if the castle is still maked your own castle then a quite fast imperial timing to treb it is very strong
Ideally you’d use xbows or knights to deny the castle.
If the castle is down already defensive castles can help, going to Imp can be good, and sending knights / lightcav to his base can work too.
It’s easy to state: Deny the Castle with you military. Cause not always you spot it early enough in time to stop it.
So if the Castle goes up, the keywort is containment. That means you try to first make sure that you only take as much damage as necessary. Wall behind, probably make your own defensive castle if the castle ranges your starting gold and stone, so the opponent can also not comfortably take your res. Then wait for the right opportunity to take the castle out. In castle age rams, in Imp usually trebs.
But you don’t need to rush that. Just make the containment. Usually castle drops are some kind of all-in strat or just to be annoying while trying to boom avay yourself. EIther way the usually most vulnerable part of the opponen is his own eco. Try to get counter-raids in.
there are a couple of things you can try
- dance a unit around in the spot where he wants to drop it. This won’t deny the castle drop, but it can buy you a bit of time (and annoy your enemy
) - defensive monks, you can delay a castle construction massively by grabbing a monk and tasking it between all the different vills as fast as you can. They’ll run away from construction much like as if they were attacked. This can give you a substantial amount of time. You can potentially produce a mangonel and deny the castle completely.
- drop your own castle if you can afford it, just grab as many vills as you can, and drop your castle in range of his castle, you’ll probably get it up faster (provided that you did not notice it too late), so you’ll not only hold and secure your position, but also get some vill picks
If the enemy Castle is already up then…
- Petards – you’ll need quite a lot, and you’ll want to make sure you can bait the castle fire with another unit first
- Rams – this one is difficult, but if you can garrison your rams with some xbow, and the enemy hasn’t got murder holes, you can use them to protect your rams from melee damage
- Go Imp before your enemy and treb it down
Otherwise, moving eco is the only thing you can do once it’s already up. Scout the map, expand to other areas of the map. Add a new TC somewhere else if it helps. There’s usually multiple woodlines, and also extra gold piles on the map. So just don’t let the Castle make you panic, that’s the most important part.
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If you already have a castle up before the enemy even begins to castle drop, make 4 petards just in case; upon seeing the castle pop them out and ensure the enemy loses stone while you pay minimal amounts to deny, rinse and repeat. Make sure to have outposts handy and at least one line of site upgrade done.
Besides the ideas dropped before. What about build some random palisades, like countering a Douche ? Could this worth? A castle ocuppies 4x4 tiles, so maybe it couldn`t cost too many wood
When the castle goes up:
dropping your own defensive castle and try to get fast imp is probably the best/safest solution.
Otherwise rams could be an option as well, if your military is much stronger/he is with his army somewhere else.
I’m not a fan of petards tho. Only if both ur castles are so close that they can already reach each other. Otherwise its to simple to focus them out and you need 8(?) of them which is already quite a lot.
Also always send some units to raid him(well on arena probably not possible). Dropping a castle early on means that his eco is probably pretty exposed(1tc). If you can force his army back it’s even much easier to take out his castles with rams.
I dont think iv ever got petards to work. Just seam easy to kill.
They’re best used if the two castles (yours and the enemy) are close together. It’s also important to bait the castle fire with some other (non-petard) unit first. It’s risky because you’re also counting on your opponent not noticing it. But sometimes it’s still a good option.
It’s better to send them with 3 or so regular infantry or cavalry in front to absorb the arrows from the castle. If they aren’t microing then by the time they are killed, it will be too late to stop the petards. That or garrison with rams.
I don’t think you can garrison petards in siege engines. The best way to deal with it in my opinion is to just go raiding in Feudal Age and simply deny the stone that they need for the castle. On a map like Arena, just have military patrolling lots of the map at all times. The thing is though, a castle drop tends to work in one of two scenarios, either A) the castle dropper has the momentum and control of most of the map that allows them to deny the other player’s resources without it being likely that the castle can be stopped, or B) they are behind and desperate, or see it as a way to force the gg if they can distract you attention elsewhere and then sneak some villagers into or near your base. Most of this can be countered by early aggression and map control of your own. Also make sure that you have LoS on all the areas around your base and that you regularly check the minimap for colors that shouldn’t be in your base.
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